


Broken Wings

by PriestessKhu



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: And not just from Cable, Angst and Humor, Anxiety, Cable needs all the love he can get, Depression, Dissociative Seizures, Eventual Smut, Explicit Language, F/M, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Inappropriate Humor, Mostly humor but the angst is gonna be strong once this gets going, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, People with SO many issues, Wade Wilson Breaking the Fourth Wall, mentions of mental health issues, so much explicit language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 08:26:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15991421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PriestessKhu/pseuds/PriestessKhu
Summary: Damaged people can find happiness within each other when they find someone whose broken matches their broken.Having a concrete parking garage and corporate building landing him in the care of an oddball mutant that goes by the name of Pup? That wasn't how Cable imagined any love story would begin. Wade begs to differ and thoroughly enjoys abusing the fourth wall.





	Broken Wings

**Author's Note:**

> So I was trying to figure out what to write to counteract the super dark and touchy subjects of my other story, Darkness Calling, when I saw Deadpool 2. And here we are. Hooking up with Cable. Don't worry if you read my other fanfic, though; I'm still working on the next chapter for it :)
> 
> Title of this fic is from the song Broken Wings by Mr. Mister, because I'm a sap, and I'll mostly be using the movieverse adaptions of the characters. Some bits of the comics I read with Cable in them might slip (like in this chapter...oops), but I'm going to make this fun for myself so oh well.
> 
> Two of the Original Characters that will be mentioned and perhaps pop up in later chapters belong to my two besties. I've gotten permission to use them in this story.

Cable didn’t like not knowing things--especially when it had to do with finding that he was slowly coming to consciousness from a state that most certainly _wasn’t_ from lying back to take a short nap.

That only meant that he must have been knocked out at some point, which would be quite the feat, but it wasn’t impossible.

The throbbing pain of a migraine Cable was starting to feel in his left temple helped him come to this conclusion while he was gradually returning to the waking world. Unfortunately, what had been the cause of his brief reprieve from reality still escaped him.

What _hadn’t_ escaped Cable, however, was a soft brush against his aching forehead.

Cable’s left hand shot up and latched onto the small wrist of whoever had just touched him. His grip was bordering on dislocating the joint and a sharp hiss of pain met his ringing ears.

“Ow...!” The voice of a young adult made Cable open his eyes and glare at whoever he had within his grasp. True to what the voice gave away, the sight of a slightly heavier-set young woman was what greeted him. She would have looked like a teenager to anyone else, but Cable had learned enough over the years to tell the subtle differences between someone in their late teens and someone who was actually...hm, he would say that the girl was probably in her mid-twenties.

Her hair was a strange, albeit natural, mixture of dark blonde and light brown with everything but the bangs framing her face pulled back. The faint glow of sunlight peeking in through what must have been a nearby window lit up a golden halo within the smooth tresses atop her head. This accented the pale hazel blue eyes behind the dark rectangular glasses she wore. Freckles danced along her pale round cheeks and down her bare arms, though they were smaller and surprisingly faint. She was wearing a dark navy blue tank top, five necklaces with varying pendants, and black shorts that revealed quite the number of various small scars lining her arms and legs. A yellow band was on her left wrist, currently mostly beneath Cable’s unrelenting vice of a grip. She was wearing surgical gloves with traces of blood on them.

She looked _vaguely_ familiar as well, but this wasn’t someone he knew personally. That was annoying, but first thing first; he proceeded to check his current state as much as his stiff body allowed him to.

Cable’s left arm was obviously still in one piece, he could feel the entirety of rest of his limbs despite his flesh shoulder being almost as sore as his skull, and it didn’t seem like he was able to use his telekinetic shielding abilities despite his T.O infection not having spread any further along his body. That meant whatever blow he took to the head, which was still producing one of the worst headaches he’d ever experienced in his life thus far, must have caused Cable to subconsciously divert his mutant abilities into keeping himself in one mostly-flesh piece as he was moved to the apartment living room he seemed to be in right now.

Keeping the Techno-Organic virus from wreaking havoc upon the rest of his body was usually as automatic to Cable as breathing, so whatever he went through must have been pretty serious for his body to do this. He needed to figure out how he got into this kind of mess.

“Can you let go of me before you break my wrist, please?” The young woman asked when Cable hadn’t said or really done anything after he glanced down at himself to find that he was shirtless. He also saw that there was quite the number of little bandages across his abdomen and maybe even his legs under the numerous tears in his pants, and turned his attention to the girl he still had a firm hold of.

She looked more than a little annoyed about becoming the proud owner of a potentially broken limb, but her true agitation was due to the pain he was causing her. Cable could feel how his tight grasp was starting to make the muscles beneath her skin twitch. Despite this fact, she wasn’t trying to pull herself free as she added, “I’d rather not have to explain to a certain Russian mother hen and the resident gruff badass with a heart of gold that I broke something when I’m supposed to be resting at home and keeping relaxed.”

“...Who the hell are you?” Cable finally grunted out, not releasing her wrist just yet. His throat felt dry; scratchy. It was usually like this after he’d inhaled a large amount of smoke or dust from falling debris.

A small smile came to that moon-shaped face, but the light of it didn’t quite reach her tired eyes. They were the eyes of someone who carried a great burden that they hid from the world. They were _haunted_ eyes that were swimming with guilt and aged far beyond her physical years.

It reminded Cable of what he saw in his _own_ gaze whenever he stared hard into a mirror.

“Ah, so he can still speak. Pretty well, too; that’s a good sign. Arm back, please. I’ll even trade you.” The girl motioned her head to a large glass of water resting on the nearby coffee table. The offer of a trade didn’t work as well as she had hoped.

“I asked you a _question_ ,” Cable growled as he chose to ignore the rather tempting liquid in the glass that was taunting him from roughly four feet away. There was still no recollection of what had happened to him, everything in his body was singing with pain, and Cable wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s antics right now. His aching skull was making him pretty irritable.

Also, there was music playing from somewhere. Cable couldn’t exactly tell what it was due to the low volume, but at least it wasn’t _dubstep_. He didn’t need his migraine getting to a level where he couldn’t ignore the nausea as well as he was currently doing.

“I would have answered you if you’d given me a damn moment,” She replied with a slight frown on her lips and a tilt of the head. The angle made the shorter strands of the bangs she kept swept mostly to the right of her face shift and nearly cover her one eye. The girl puffed them back and placed her free hand over the one he still had clamped agonizingly tight around her wrist, trying to keep from getting any of the blood coating her latex fingertips on him. She wasn’t physically trying to pull Cable’s hand off despite wanting to desperately do so. The pain was just starting to become too much for her. “But seriously; I need you to let go. My fibromyalgia is acting up today and it sort of _really_ hurts. I’m trying to help you, not hurt you.”

There was a moment of silent deliberation. Cable was gauging the probability of her actually telling him the truth while she stared at him with that little frown and those haunted eyes of hers. Her gaze was flicking between his nose, one of his cheeks, and failed attempts at keeping eye contact for longer than a few seconds at a time. He knew what that kind of behavior tended to indicate.

Cable soon loosened his grasp enough for her to slip herself free. The girl pulled the gloves off before gingerly rubbed her wrist with another small sound at the pain once she had her limb back. Cable saw the words ‘FALL RISK’ stamped on the yellow wrist band, and there was a twisted black bracelet hanging loosely on her right wrist.

“If you claim to want to _help_ me, you can start by telling me where the hell I am.” Cable tried to sit up as he said this, only to have her smaller hands at his metal shoulder and flesh side of his upper chest in an attempt to keep him down. Her hand was warm against his bare skin.

“Don’t get up yet, idiot! I just barely finished suturing the wound on your shoulder after it finally stop bleeding all over the place, and you banged your head pretty badly in the explosion! You need to stay still and rest a little bit longer...!” The young woman had genuine concern upon her face as she scolded Cable for suddenly moving like that. Unfortunately for her, he was too annoyed and achy to care.

_Grumpy old man mode activated._

“I don’t care about that. You need to tell me what the hell is going _o_ _n,_ ” Cable snapped as he tried to get up again without throwing her across the room. Just like before, however, his efforts were thwarted by her hands upon him, only much more firm this time. It made him realize that some of his usual super strength wasn’t there and he was, maybe just a _teensy_ bit, dizzy. He must have taken one hell of a hit in the explosion that was just mentioned. That meant that it might actually be in his best interests if he did what she said. _Damn it._

“If you wait a damn minute instead of trying to tear your stitches and bleed out all over the sofa, I’ll tell you what you want to know! Now stop moving!” The girl snapped back and glared down at him. She reached up with the hand that had been on his metal shoulder to shift something back over his injured temple. It felt like gauze, and Cable was now also aware of the aforementioned stitches in his flesh shoulder before he was distracted by the young woman pointing to something beside what really was a sofa. It was a blood-soaked pillow on a towel, along with quite the number of bloody bandages, gloves, and gauze. “Do you know how much it’s going to cost to get this shit clean before I have to run back to the X-mansion and act like I was actually doing what I was told? I’m going to have to mug someone once I’m done here, so I hope you’re happy.”

That made Cable pause for a moment.

Not the mugging thing, which he was pretty sure was supposed to be a joke, but the mention of X-mansion got him thinking. If this girl was a part of the X-men, then it could explain why she looked familiar despite him not having met her in person. Or, at least, Cable didn’t _think_ he’d met her in person before then. He hated when he couldn’t just get the information he wanted with his trusty guns. None of which he could currently see in the living room with them. Fuck.

“Now are you going to be a good boy and stay still, or do I have to straddle you? Because I normally wouldn’t complain with a body like yours, but we just met and I’m not that kind of girl.” She stared down at Cable, expecting him to get fed up and finally just fling her off like a doll, but he didn’t. The girl knew that she should probably be suspicious of that but...hell, she’d done dumber shit before. Why stop now?

Cable stared back, his mind working through the migraine that just wouldn’t go away.

He could manage to walk out of here stone-faced and go lick his wounds well out of the sight of others if he wanted to. His regeneration abilities were limited, but they did their job with time. However, if Cable did something like that in the current state of affairs, then it might not end well. Especially with the memory loss.

Because let’s be honest here. Getting answers out of that asshole Wade Wilson, who was the last person Cable remembered seeing (and wanting to throttle with his bare hands), would be too much of a pain in the ass right now. But was it worth putting his trust in some stranger?

“Well?” The girl pressed him for an answer and he glared. She wasn’t moving her hands, palms pressed to flesh and metal cords. She was too close and he didn’t like this.

“Go back to playing heroes at your Barbie dream mansion. I don’t need your help.” Cable growled his reply. He tried to sit up a third time, actually getting one foot on the floor this attempt, but she refused to relent. _Now_ he was contemplating throwing her off of him. He seemed to have enough strength left to do that much, at least.

Not that this kid seemed to care.

“You wouldn’t be saying that so easily if you’d seen yourself when I was asked to look after you. I’m going to finish patching up your wounds, and then you’re going to need to eat or drink something to build your blood back up.” She leaned down, getting closer to Cable’s face and giving him quite the impressive glare to counter his own, “If I have to knock your ass out in order to do that, then so be it.”

Cable scowled. He also took note of how she was managing to keep solid eye contact with him in her anger. She was standing her ground. Impressive, but _not_ what he needed right now. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to, you fucking _brat?_ ”

“Yeah, I do, and I don’t care, _old man_. Now are you going to lay still long enough for me to do my job or not, Cable?” Yes, it appeared that she actually knew who he was. That made her either incredibly brave, or incredibly _stupid._

But the little shit had balls, he’d give her that much.

“...Be quick about it,” Cable said gruffly as he pushed her hands off of him and lay back down. The girl looked down at him cautiously, but he simply stared back at her with his gaze being one of impatience. He was severely guarded and watching her like a hawk, but at least he was being more cooperative. For the moment.

“Alright. Thank you.” The young woman relaxed and became docile like a switch had been flipped, content with Cable’s reluctant cooperation, and moved to where a small bowl of water and rags were resting on the coffee table near the glass of water. Cable noticed that the table had been pushed out of the way to make room for the kitchen chair she was seated on as she was doing...whatever she was doing to deal with his wounds.

Cleaning and closing them still, it seemed, but she wasn’t going to let him move enough to do a better visual analysis of himself than he had earlier. Whatever. He could do that later.

It wasn’t something Cable liked, being fussed over and tended to like a child, but he was beginning to feel the true extent of exhaustion his entire being was in now that his adrenaline rush upon waking was gone, and it wasn’t exactly pleasant. He’d pushed his body to the limits somehow and _still_ couldn’t remember it. That just left him to get the information out of the girl he was watching-- _without_ simple brute force. She was the type of woman that would fight that very brute force with some of her own. It would get him nowhere in the end.

Small talk it was, then. “So...you’re an X-men.”

Okay, that was dumb, but what was he supposed to do? Tie her to a chair? Torture her? No. No, it wouldn’t work like that with someone like her. Cable needed to get her to open up, which she didn’t seem to mind doing...to a point, anyway. He wasn’t the only one that had their internal defenses up.

“X- _person_ , according to Wade. My work alias is Boiling Point, or B.P., but I’ve been put on leave from any missions until further notice,” She replied and finished wringing out one of the clean rags. She leaned over Cable in order to carefully peel away the damp gauze that she’d placed over his temple earlier. The wound there was dabbed lightly with the cool rag, though it began to sting from whatever was in it. Probably peroxide. Cable hardly felt it when he had other things to think about.

Thankfully, now that he knew her mutant name, Cable could understand the familiarity of her face. Every now and again, when he was still in the future and a job called for it, he’d done his research on those who were in the old files of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Cable never had a desire to go to the school in the present time he was in. That was, at least, until needing to discuss some things with Professor Charles Xavier himself roughly half a year ago.

Boiling Point was one of the many children that had grown up at the school from her teenage years and remained there as an adult to help teach the younger generations of mutants when she wasn’t out on missions. Her specialty was battle reflex training, but she would stand in on any actual school lessons if a substitute teacher was needed.

Cable had been to the X-Mansion a number of times after connecting with Professor Xavier, met quite a few of the residents over the year he’d spent in this time, but he never _once_ saw Boiling Point amongst the flocking crowd of curious fellow mutants. There was also that one fight he’d helped the X-Men with, though Cable still never actually _saw_ her. He just caught wind of her reckless behavior during battle.

“ _Where the hell is B.P.!?”_

“ _Where do you **think**!? She charged right into the middle of this mess with Shifty!”_

“ _Damn it, when I get my hands on those brats...!”_

According to the records in the future? This kid was quite the troublemaker, yet always got out of even the worst situations alive. Beaten to hell and back, but alive. She was pretty durable for a hydrokinetic mutant, and no one could stop her once she got some dumb idea into her stubborn head--even after she was said to have retired. Cable couldn’t help but huff softly to himself in concealed amusement while recalling all of this information.

“What’s so funny?” Her voice drew Cable’s gaze up to the where she was still focused on cleaning his temple wound. She glanced down when she was met silence and saw those gorgeous eyes of his burning into her with wary curiosity, especially his cybernetic eye, and Boiling Point had to look away from the intensity of it. Her inability to keep eye contact with people she wasn’t close to had a hand in her gaze being averted so quickly.

His rugged good looks also may have had something to do with it, too. _Maybe_.

As far as Cable was concerned, he had given no outward indication that the noise he’d made was from something he found mildly humorous. There also was no mention in the Xavier’s School files that the mutant Boiling Point was, by any means, telepathic.

She seemed to sense his renewed unease and went back to carefully cleaning some dried blood from the side of his face as she explained herself. “Don’t give me such a scary look; I’m a latent empath. I try not to read other people’s energy and emotions so casually, but it’s hard to keep things blocked out when I’m this physically close. It showed up recently as a secondary mutation.”

There was something in her words that almost made it seem like she was... _upset_ with such a secondary mutation. There was no real reason that she should be.

“That’s not in your records.” Cable stared hard at her with his lips set in a firmer line than usual. He was uncertain about her to begin with, but now he wasn’t willing to bet that she was really who she said she was. At least he knew how to block his emotions off to even empaths.

“It’s better that way,” Boiling Point began softly. She could sense Cable’s energy shift, thicken, and his emotions were no longer oozing out the signals she was unintentionally picking up on. She said nothing on this. “Just until I finally learn to keep from losing myself in the feelings of those around me, you know?”

She wasn’t bothered that he blocked her out, nor with how he knew about her records. Boiling Point even shared some personal information that not a lot of people obviously knew about. That could be extremely dangerous for a mutant, and that made Cable want to know why she would do that in the first place.

He might be in a trap right now and not even know it, and that would be a pain in the ass to deal with if a trap really was the case. “...You’re awfully eager to divulge personal information so casually.”

“Yeah, I tend to do stupid stuff like that. I know who you are though, remember? It should be alright.” Boiling Point was so _nonchalant_ about it. It didn’t seem out of arrogance, though. It was more out of some bizarre level of trust she was allowing herself to have. Cable wasn’t comfortable with that.

“Then you already know that I could easily just kill you and be done with it,” He said, trying to recreate some of the distance that he realized the young woman was a little too close to erasing. Cable must have _really_ gone and cracked his head in that alleged explosion.

“Oh, there is absolutely no doubt that you could end my life with just a _napkin_. A little advice though? You should probably work on that dirty talk of yours, because not a lot of people are into that whole ‘kill you’ thing,” She snickered. It was mostly to herself and was fully expected to get some sort of negative reaction, like a grunt or a glare. Cable seemed notorious for those from all of the stories Wade told her, as well as what she’d experienced for herself so far today.

Rather than find her almost Wade-esque brand of humor annoying, however, Cable felt...well, he actually found it pretty entertaining in an odd sort of way. He wasn’t about to let his guard down, but she had some pretty weird ideas. Because, _really_? Killing someone with just a _napkin_?

Cable probably _could_ kill someone in a number of different ways with a napkin alone, but who would even think to do such a thing?

“You’re a strange one, kid.” Cable couldn’t help but speak with an actual low _chuckle_ , noticing how the sudden noise caused Boiling Point to jump a little and quickly look to his face. She seemed shocked at first, but a smile curled at the corners of her lips and she looked away again. She had a dimple on her right cheek.

“I thought I was just a ‘fucking brat’ to you, old man?” Boiling Point teased lightly. Things were calm now compared to a little while ago, and it was...pleasant. A little bit. _Sort of_.

“You _are,_ ” Cable deadpanned. Blunt, but not intended to be mean. Even if it was, he somehow doubted that she saw ‘brat’ as being an insult.

“You can just call me Pup since we’re still a few conversations away from the ‘you little shit’ stage of our encounter. I’m fine either way, though.” Boiling Point-- _Pup_ \--continued to smile as she began to bandage the large cut on Cable’s temple. She was being so _gentle_ about it, as if she were handling something precious to her. He wasn’t used to that kind of care from people in this time.

“Pup, huh,” Cable muttered, studying her mannerisms for a moment, “Doesn’t suit you.” He closed his eyes, grimacing, in an attempt to stave off the relentless migraine starting to get a little worse as he laid his left hand across his stomach. He could feel the cooler metal sliding over a couple of those smaller cuts that had been patched up already. Thanks to his limited regeneration factor, they were probably already mostly healed.

Too bad his shoulder wasn’t doing the same. Larger wounds were a bitch like that.

“Well too bad. You don’t know me that well and it’s what I like to go by, so suck it up,” She huffed while finishing with Cable’s left temple. Pup also took care of a slightly smaller, fading cut on his forehead that was just an inch or so away from the wound of what was a blunt force impact. It looked like it had little flecks of metal debris around it and she was very thorough in cleaning them away without causing discomfort.

Pup sat back in her chair, looked Cable over for a moment, and then grabbed the glass of water from the coffee table. She touched his arm gently to get him to open his eyes before she offered the glass. “Now...you want to know what happened to land you here, in the abode of a woman who is currently some place out in space and will probably hand me over to Colossus for the scolding of a lifetime when she realizes that I had to clean her apartment like a crime scene?”

“That would be a nice change of pace, yes.” Cable was glad for the water once he took the glass, but he refused to let Pup help him hold his head up to drink it from it. Injured he may be, but he’d be damned if he allowed himself to look so weak that he couldn’t drink _water_ on his own.

“You’ve got some pretty good sass for an old guy that got his ass handed to him by multiple massive inanimate objects,” Pup retorted teasingly. She giggled when Cable narrowed his eyes at her while sipping the cool water and letting it sooth his irritated throat. “Okay, okay; enough with the glaring. You obviously are still having a few problems remembering everything, hopefully just temporary amnesia from the concussion you no doubt have, so where would you like me to start?”

“The explosion you mentioned.” Cable handed the now empty glass back to Pup, who was a lot more relaxed around him than most people tended to be. He was careful not to sit up too far or lie down too quickly so he didn’t have to be fussed over, and got right to demanding answers now that he was actually going to get them without any distractions. About damn time. “What caused it?”

“Wade, no doubt. He didn’t give me any details other than the fact you two were on some super duper ‘top secret’ mission to topple a company, but there’s already some footage online of shit going sideways. Apparently, the weight of that massive cement parking garage you were in blasted out on either the second or base level and landed on you hard enough to knock even the great Cable out. The corporate office building next to it getting caught up in the explosion and crashing right onto the parking garage as it was going down probably didn’t help matters,” Pup responded calmly. She honestly didn’t know all of the finer details of how it was caused or why. Still, she genuinely wanted to help Cable out as much as she could. He could sense this, though ignored being called great.

The mention of a mission sounded familiar, but it wasn’t bringing anything back to him _fast_ enough. “...How long?”

“Hm?” Pup tilt her head, having not heard Cable too well. He looked preoccupied and annoyed, and probably didn’t realize that he’d practically mumbled the words.

“How long was I _out_?” Cable repeated with a growl. Pup straitened up a bit, a little shiver going up her spine from the sound and the steeled look in his eyes. He really _did_ take his self-appointed job seriously, didn’t he?

“Um...long enough for Wade to show up in my room, drag me out to a cab where you were bleeding in the back seat, bring us to my friend’s apartment, and then gallivant off to only the gods know where; all while I struggled to keep enough blood in your body that it didn’t require a blood transfusion. Which wasn’t as hard as I expected. I would have taken you to the X-Mansion for that, but...well, they don’t let me near certain life-saving equipment anymore. Especially the scalpels, bone saw, and...I think it’s called a defibrillator? The little ‘clear!’ machine thingy, but that one was mostly Wade’s fault.” She gave a guilty little grin when Cable raised an eyebrow in her direction at that last bit. Now just what would someone have to do in order to get banned from _medical equipment?_ And why the hell would Wade _bring_ him to someone like that?

No, scratch that.

Of _course_ Wade would bring Cable to someone fully capable in wound care, but still somehow questionable in it all at the same time. Fucking dumbass.

“My renowned idiocy aside, you’re lucky you didn’t die today. Your shoulder needed stitches and I still haven’t gotten around to properly bandaging the larger cuts on your back. I was more concerned with stopping any external bleeding, making sure you didn’t have any major broken bones or _internal_ bleeding, and doing a quick clean of your visible wounds. You’re pretty damn durable though, so you’ve only been out for about...an hour and a half now? Almost two hours?” He watched Pup check her cell phone, which was the source of the varying music he’d been hearing, and she gave a nod to her calculation.

She was about to say how it was a little weird that he really couldn’t remember at least _something_ about what landed him in her care, but a look of realization crossed Cable’s face before she could.

Yes, it was coming back to him now-- _the mission!_

Wade, the X-Force, the importance of that damn company being taken down before they could do catastrophic damage to the mutant population, that fucking garage and apparently a building _landing_ on him when he was already injured and distracted from fighting another mutant that the company founder had hired as a bodyguard for himself and his four ass-kissing senior executives.

Cable shot up into a sitting position the instant he recalled all of this. There was a sharp stab of shredding pain in his right shoulder and it was promptly ignored; all without so much as a glance or grimace. Not from him, anyway.

As Cable was expecting from Pup’s earlier reaction, the girl damn near tripped over herself to get up from her chair and try to stop him as she shouted in alarm: “Hey, I told you not to move yet!”

“I need to complete the mission. The wounds can wait,” Cable grunted. He pushed her away with his right arm, still ignoring the pain of raw skin being stretched and torn by strained stitches. Pup was having none of it. In fact, she actually _slapped_ his flesh arm. Pretty damn hard, too, and it made Cable pause. He didn’t know if it was out of shock or not; a lot of people weren’t dumb enough to do such a thing to someone who could snap them in half like a twig at any given moment.

“They most certainly can _not_ wait, now sit still for a damn second,” She reprimanded him, although her tone was more concerned than pissed off. Pup forced Cable to lower his right arm, _carefully_ , as her other hand was placed gently against the flesh side of his chest. Her hands were soft against his skin. Gentle.

 _Warm_.

Just like her breath as she examined his shoulder closely and with great care. Tone softening, Pup tried to bring Cable some peace of mind in the hopes that it would keep him from running out and getting himself hurt again. Exactly like she would if their roles were reversed, really. “As far as I know, your mission is already finished. The company was exposed for some shady shit and the reporters are already having a field day with it. The joys of modern day technology, I guess.”

“...You’re certain of this?” Cable asked. Pup lift her gaze to meet his briefly with a flutter of her lashes before giving a nod and returning her attention to the wound that was now bleeding again. The look in her eyes was nothing like that of a liar. An emotionally scarred individual, but not a liar.

“Yeah. I’ll show you later. Now...damn it, you popped a couple of your stitches. Hold still...” Pup trailed off. The hand on his chest slid to press over where his heart was. Her other hand went to the bottom of his shoulder blade and she closed her eyes while hovering her forehead just a breath away from his shoulder. She was careful not to touch the stitches, but her sudden closeness and what could be considered some sort of embrace caused Cable to immediately stiffen. He almost pushed her away again.

“What are you doing?” His voice was surprisingly low, even through his immense unease. It was as if he somehow expected that speaking in that moment would scare her off. It didn’t, but a part of Cable wished it had.

“Part of my empathic mutation allows me to ease someone’s pain by taking the majority of it from their energy and incorporating it into my own. I should be able to keep yours at bay while I stop the bleeding again if I concentrate hard enough,” The girl explained. She was opening herself, feeling the heavy energy that defined Cable, and her body involuntarily shuddered. It was strong enough to cause her hairs to stand on end and she unintentionally pressed her fingers against him a little harder. “You feel like you have a headache too, so I’ll try to take on some of that for you. And before you try to argue that you don’t need it? I don’t care, I’m doing it anyway.”

Pup tried to withhold the tremors that were threatening to start from that one shudder. The sheer power she was trying to mix her weaker energy into felt as if it might consume her and all she wanted to do was tremble. Whether it was from fear or excitement, Pup didn’t know.

She just had to make sure that she wasn’t swept away by the very essence of the man she was trying to help.

Cable could have simply left right then and there, larger injuries be damned, but...he didn’t. He could see how she was trying not to show just how difficult the task of empathically linking herself to him was going to be. Temporary or not, Pup wasn’t used to a connection to someone who had as many problems as he did. Cable also knew that, if he pulled away so suddenly and broke the connection, it could irreversibly damage her underdeveloped psychic abilities or even her mind to some degree.

Pup must have known the dangers of this as well. Like she said, though; it didn’t look like she was going to stop trying to help him any time soon.

The continuation of Cable’s inaction must have had to do with the fact that he was quite worn down from everything. He was superhuman, yes, but he also knew that he wasn’t unstoppable and sometimes needed a little help when physically injured like this. _Rarely_. Not that he would ever admit it to another living being in a million years.

So this situation would be handled like all of the times Cable would begrudgingly see a back alley doctor. Get the worst wounds taken care of and grunt his thanks on the way out the door.

He still refused to allow himself to relax and continued watching Pup intently from the corner of his eye. “A hydrokinetic, and now a latent empath. You certainly have quite the range of abilities going.”

“Not really,” Pup muttered. Under the smell of concrete dust and blood, there was a hint of old spice and some sort of aftershave coming from Cable. She forced that realization out of her mind and tried to concentrate on safely mingling their energies around his shoulder and roughly where his headache was located. That was easier said than done in her case, as with most things.

“The Professor says that they’re just manifestations of some of my many facets. If you ask me? I’m more like a half-assed character created by some disturbed teenager who couldn’t decide on what power she liked more,” She explained. Pup knew that, from his almost perpetual bitch face since the moment he regained consciousness, Cable most likely didn’t give a flying fuck about any of that at this point. He probably just wanted this all to be done with so he could leave in a slightly less bloody state than he was to start with.

“You almost sound like that jabbering butt plug.” Cable’s snort basically confirmed that suspicion for her, but Pup couldn’t help letting out a laugh at what she heard. It was a little loud, but still a rather pleasant laugh. A true laugh. She hadn’t had one of those in a while.

“Are you talking about Wade? Because I _am_ one of his friends. He’s an asshole, but at least he’s lovable about it,” She replied around some persistent giggling. When all she got as a response was a grunt, Pup took it as a silent ‘hurry up’ and complied just as silently, albeit with a relaxed smile. And another round of giggles as she whispered ‘jabbering butt plug,’ under her breath and ended up resting her forehead against his shoulder while hers shook in her laughter.

“ _Concentrate_ ,” Cable instructed. Pup’s hair was soft and tickled the skin of his bicep when she nodded.

“Right. Sorry.” She quickly apologized and got back to envisioning her energy delicately moving against Cable’s. Hers was swirling into his like indigo blue food colouring dripping into water, seeping in and melding with a color she couldn’t quite sense. Thankfully Pup didn’t need to discern the colour of Cable’s aura in order to share his physical pains.

Her shoulder began to burn as her body took on most of the energy of the pain signals being sent to Cable’s brain by agitated nerves of the stitched wound. Pup twitched faintly when she realized that what she sensed was a headache was actually one hell of a migraine, but pushed through the new pains as best she could.

“Don’t pass out on me, kid.” Cable found himself muttering when he noticed that she might actually faint. His voice broke the brief silence that had fallen between them, but Pup simply huffed.

“I’m fine,” She insisted stubbornly. Her faintly trembling body contradicted this. Not that she really cared, what with worrying about the fellow mutant she was in charge of fixing up. “If you start feeling some emotions that don’t belong to you, they’re going to be mine. I’ll try to keep them from trickling through so you don’t have to deal with any of the shit that makes me such a walking disaster.”

Cable couldn’t help but find that a little ironic given all of the shit that he kept to himself every day, but he didn’t want to pressure Pup while she trying to patch him up. The blood trickling down his back let him know that he wouldn’t have been able to stitch the wound on his shoulder on his own with where it stopped half way down his shoulder blade. “Just do what you need to.”

It was due to a faint tingle in his nerves that Cable took notice of the fact the aches, of wounds and muscles alike, were fading. The pain wasn’t entirely gone, but it had become nothing more than a bug bite to him. It was a welcome change from what he’d been putting up with since waking up on this sofa.

The hand Pup had on his back grabbed some fresh gauze to wipe up the blood that had oozed down his back. She pressed it against his wound and fought to keep her energy in check. It was hard with not only having little experience in using her empathic abilities like this, but Cable had an unbelievably high level of pain tolerance. Pup was a little jealous about that.

Okay, she was _really_ jealous about that.

Cable could sense this faintly, yet said nothing as it was quick to fade into the background of the white noise of her other emotions. He wasn’t feeling much difference in his usual internal cluster fuck of bullshit and that meant that it didn’t warrant pointing out. He was busy making sure that Pup didn’t accidentally dig into something she had no right sensing.

His loneliness seemed more prominent than usual, plus there was a twinge of anxiety and depression that most certainly _wasn’t_ his flitting through like some sort of moth. Just little things came and went as the seconds ticked by with only the sound of their breathing. Cable’s breaths were steady, but Pup’s were becoming strained the longer their energies were merged. She was really pushing herself for the sake of his physical comfort.

He could feel how Pup was teetering on the knife’s edge of her limits, and such compassion and dedication made Cable feel...it made him _feel_...

“Pretty sure the bleeding has stopped by now,” He said, pushing the feelings away and burying them deep to make sure that they couldn’t do anything. Cable didn’t need any distractions and most certainly didn’t want Pup to feel anything _fuzzy_ _and warm_ coming from him just because she was being so caring towards him. They hardly knew each other and on top of that, with his past--

\--Yeah, best to not think about things like that. It wasn’t like he was _touch-starved_ or anything. ~~_Which he totally was and no one was_~~ ~~ _ **ever**_~~ ~~ _going to know._~~

Thankfully for Cable, Pup didn’t seem to sense anything he would adamantly deny until his dying breath. She simply pulled her head and the gauze back enough to make sure that the blood had really stopped.

“Yeah, you’re right,” She sighed in relief and threw the soiled gauze into the pile with the rest of the bloody mess of first aid supplies. Pup moved only one of her hands, grabbing a clean set of surgical gloves from a box somewhere on the cluttered coffee table. “I’ll fix the popped stitches up, but I can’t move too far away from you or your pain will come back. I don’t know where the pain meds are kept here.”

Cable just exhaled a silent sigh through his nose as he leaned forward about an inch or so. From what he could feel of the large wound? She was going to need him to be at this angle. “Like I said; do what you need to. The pain doesn’t bother me.”

“I’ve noticed. Makes me wish my pain tolerance is as high as yours.” Pup pulled her other hand away to slip both gloves on easier. Sweat was starting to collect on her brow as she continued to maintain the empathic connection as best she could. Her mind was threatening to get fuzzy and light, but Pup tried to ignore it.

“You wouldn’t want it to be,” Cable’s reply to her words was low and deathly serious. He’d unintentionally allowed his voice to become soft compared to the usual sharpness he tended to speak with. “Trust me.”

Pup glanced to Cable’s hardened profile. He wasn’t keeping a close eye on her anymore and instead stared off into the distance with an apathetic expression to conceal his pain. She wasn’t able to feel much from him, given that Cable was limiting her access to his innermost energies and the majority of his emotions. However, Pup didn’t need to sense anything to recognize the look in his eyes.

Sorrow, anger, hatred, _guilt_.

Oh, how familiar those emotions were to her...

“Is it because of the war that happens in the future?” Pup asked softly as she began to thread a sterilized needle. She didn’t have to glance up to see Cable damn near give himself whiplash to glare at her.

“How did you--” He began to demand.

Pup only spoke a single word that explained it all: “Wade.”

“ _Dumbass,_ ” Cable’s growl brought another giggle from Pup. She seemed to like it when he swore, or just found it amusing that he was pissed off at her friend. Odd, really, but not in a bad way. Not a lot of people appreciated the fine art of knowing when, and how, to swear so viciously that an old sailor would go running from the room while crying for their mommy.

“It’s only two stitches that need to be taken out and redone, so this shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes. I don’t have any forceps to make the process easier than this, or any antibiotics, so...sorry.” Pup shifted herself so she was able to get the best reach for the busted stitches.

She’d made each stitch an individual one in case something like this happened. Cable was an infamous badass, so it was best to stay away from stitches that were all connected. Who even _did_ those anymore?

...Aside from mercs or villains dealing with their own wounds.

“Don’t apologize.” Cable was still annoyed with how a walking dildo could have such a big mouth--one that he currently wanted to punch with his cybernetic fist. He bet he could decapitate Wade if he hit him hard enough. “Just get it done, kid.”

Pup raised her eyebrows as she carefully cut and pulled the ruined stitches out, one at a time. “We’re _still_ not at the ‘you little shit’ stage? This might be a new record for me. I must be losing my touch.”

“Not if you don’t shut your mouth soon, you aren’t,” Cable retorted. The response he got was a snicker.

“Now this is where I would usually say ‘make me’, but I don’t want you moving yet and it _just_ might make things more than a little awkward. I mean, you’re _very_ aesthetically pleasing, but like I said earlier; not that kind of girl.” Cable didn’t feel the sting of the alcohol swab Pup wiped the edges of his wound with, being more preoccupied with her words. It was hard to tell if she was messing around with him or not.

He wasn’t agitated at her talking, per se, but he _was_ back to wanting to be done there. This time the reasoning was so he could find and strangle Wade. “Jesus Christ, just _finish_ already.”

“You are making it _really_ hard not to just run with this. Normally I don’t bother holding back,” Pup whined. Cable pinned her with a hard stare and got a sorry-not-sorry grin. “Sorry. Shutting up now.”

“Little shit...” Cable mumbled.

“There we go!” Pup chirped happily. She still had that grin on her face when Cable gave an annoyed side glance, but her apparent joy at ‘not losing her touch’ was amusing. Refreshing, even. She really was a strange one and he almost, _almost_ , felt like smirking.

Cable shook his head at her antics, only to blink in confusion when the nearby music stopped and Pup handed him her cell phone. It was a simple touch screen, an older model of phone compared to all of the fancy things the kids had during this time period.

“...You don’t have a smart phone?” He raised an eyebrow as he turned the phone over a few times. And here he thought he’d seen all of the primitive technology this time had to offer.

“Be happy it isn’t a _flip_ phone.” Pup could see Cable’s confusion at the mention of a flip phone and smiled about it as she began the first new stitch. His skin was, quite literally, thick. Thicker than it normally should be, but that might have just been a mutation so it wasn’t a bother. She’d stitched up worse before. “The news on the accident is already pulled up and seems to have been updated a few times already, so knock yourself out.”

He stared at her a moment before turning his attention to the phone in his hands as his mind analyzed their most recent interactions. The air about them had completely changed from a simple calm.

Neither of them had entirely emerged from their shells, but it seemed to be difficult for Cable to not feel a sense of ease around this kid. He was keeping himself guarded, just as Pup was despite her humor, and yet it appeared as if they’d unknowingly reached some sort of unspoken understanding. A common ground.

They’d both been through some shit in their lives and were careful not to let anyone in too far, let alone show whatever pains they kept under lock and key. An empathetic asshole and a brat with a bleeding heart; just two broken people living in similar states of a mostly stagnant existence with no true hostility toward one another.

Cable needed to be taken care of, and Pup was going to do just that; even if it would have turned out to be as simple as giving him a band-aid and sending him on his way.

Those thoughts faded away from Cable as he used Pup’s phone to scan the internet for any and all media outlets that had already covered the explosion. As she had said earlier, Cable was now also pretty certain that Wade had something to do with at least the corporate building being blown out on one side near the base floors.

Videos, articles, _blogs_ ; Cable was scanning them all as Pup diligently tied off the newer stitches. She was idly listening to the clips of video coverage that he played while all of the crap was dug through.

A lot of people had been injured, but only four had actually been confirmed dead. They were the company executives and all had their grimy little fingers in some sort of dubious plot, but the police didn’t know to what extent. All they had found out so far was that the company was a front for a major underground crime syndicate. They dealt in mutant slave trade and, according to Cable, were working to mass produce a drug that enhanced mutant abilities...at a devastating cost.

“It varies from mutant to mutant,” He explained, keeping his eyes trained on the small screen as information scrolled by, “But there is always one constant in the end: death. Every mutant injected with that shit dies in a matter of hours.”

“That’s horrible...” Pup breathed out. She’d never personally been put through any experiments or mutant drug trails, but she’d met enough children that _had_ and saw what damage it caused. The children would come to the school distrustful of those around them, would wake up screaming in the dead of night, and often unintentionally hurt themselves or others. That was what her and the others were there for, though; to help.

“That’s why I’m taking them down.” Cable’s resolution was as firm as ever, but he now needed to make a new plan. Someone had gotten away...the company founder that was the kingpin of the criminal activity the company was so good at covering up. That slimy bastard was hiding out somewhere after escaping the explosion.

He also probably thought that Cable had been killed in the chaos, which gave the super soldier the advantage. _Good._

Pup was in agreement with how people like that needed to be taken out. She was about to verbalize this, but a sudden sensation washed over her and she felt her throat tighten. It unfortunately wasn’t a foreign feeling, almost as if she were falling away from herself, but it could _not_ have happened at a worse moment. There was no time for her to try and fight off what was coming. Not with how she’d already strained herself that day.

There was a pause, a waver in their connection, and Cable glanced over his shoulder. Pup was staring blankly at his back as if she were in some sort of daze. A trance, perhaps. It was like her mind wasn’t in control anymore and her body simply stopped moving now that the brain wasn’t giving out signals to blink or continue moving limbs. She was still breathing though, which only served to confuse and caution him.

Had he been lured into the smallest false sense of security and was about to be forced to fight with a human puppet?

Cable hoped not. That would be a pain in the ass with those stitches in his shoulder.

“What is it?” He asked and turned his upper body a fraction of an inch. He was preparing to be attacked, but it never came. Pup simply snapped out of whatever mental subspace she’d drifted off to and shook her head to regain some clarity.

She was pretty annoyed, even a little embarrassed, but tried to hide this fact. Of all the fucking times for this to happen, let alone with someone she didn’t know that well...!

“Oh, um...sorry. Distracted by my thoughts,” Pup lied in the hopes that Cable wouldn’t press her for the truth of what had just happened. “I’m done with the stitches. All I need to do now is bandage up your shoulder and back, and then you can leave after a large glass of orange juice.”

Aside from now looking utterly exhausted, Pup wasn’t any different compared to before. Cable chose to label the strange behavior as a side effect of the girl using an ability she didn’t have complete control over while he remained wary. Pup was secretly relieved about this when the older mutant said nothing more on what she referred to as an episode.

She was able to retract her energy from his without further problems on her end. Cable gave no indication of the pain being back full force (migraine not included, surprisingly) and went back to the phone as Pup delicately taped gauze over his stitches. She began in on the smaller wounds lining the bruised skin of his back that seemed to be slowly closing on their own. Only a few of them needed actual bandages, so that was good.

Her mind refused to shut down on the issue of her condition, though. Pup tried desperately to push it away so another episode didn’t occur, but it was always easier in theory than in practice. Why was she so upset about it, anyway?

All the people who needed to know about her most recently developed issue already did. She didn’t want anyone else to figure it out unless it couldn’t be helped.

Hell, not even _Wade_ knew, so Pup wasn’t about to bother Cable with it.

The front door to the apartment burst open suddenly, causing Pup to release a rather undignified noise between a yelp and a squeak as she jolted in her seat. Cable hadn’t jumped like she had, but he was wishing that he knew where one of his guns or his utility pack were; especially when he saw who was standing in the doorway.

“What’s up, my peeps? I come bearing the gift of slaughtered fruit!” Wade Wilson, dressed in his usual Deadpool getup and holding a convenience store bag, greeted them cheerily. The two glaring at him weren’t as enthusiastic about his arrival.

“What the _fuck_ , Wade!” Pup snapped and chucked the nearest thing at his head.

“Woah there!” Wade dodged the bloodstained pillow, letting it fly out into the apartment staircase. “Yeesh, you’ve only just _met_ Cable and you’re grumpier than usual. You should really get yourself a vibrator or something, my little marshmallow of deep fried fury.”

Deep fried fury wasn’t too far off the mark most of the time, but Pup was too tired to go full blown rage gremlin and opted not to throw more bloodied things across the room. It was unhygienic. “I wouldn’t be so pissed off if you hadn’t just burst in here like that! What if I’d still been sewing him up!?” Her irritation towards him was clear and it made Wade feel a little bad.

He understood that Pup was mad because one, she hated being startled, and two, she genuinely worried about accidentally injuring the people that she was taking care of. Not just people, either, because Pup loved just about every animal on the planet. She would have started a miniature farm on the Xavier school grounds if she wasn’t worried about them being killed when the mansion was attacked or something.

Pup would be queen of the waterfowl if there was absolutely no risk to potential feather babies. Wade should try to sneak her some ducklings and goslings one of these days.

“I’m sorry, Puppers,” Wade gave his heartfelt apology as he made his way across the living room. As expected, however, the merc with a mouth never knew when to shut up. “Would a squeaky toy make you feel better? Because I don’t have any dog treats on me at the moment. Probably would've eaten those on the way here. Is there anything in the fridge? I’m starved!”

“You are _so_ lucky that I don’t carry a gun,” Pup grumbled. Her and Cable watched Wade drop the bag on the coffee table before he disappeared into the kitchen and the sound of the fridge opening could be heard. Then the cupboards. And the drawers.

“Speaking of guns,” Cable began as he glanced to Pup, but he didn’t need to say any more than that. She understood what he was getting at.

“They’re in the bathroom next to what’s left of your shirt, boots, and your fanny pack thing. The only thing I got around to cleaning was the little teddy bear you had attached to your belt since I thought it looked important. I’m done with your back anyway, so feel free to get up and grab your stuff if you aren’t too dizzy. I know you probably want to get out of here.” Pup smiled warmly at Cable when she nodded towards the hallway. She really _did_ look exhausted at this point from all she had done for him. He shouldn’t have let her do any of it in the first place.

Cable exhaled heavily through his nose and stood from the sofa. Those pale blue eyes were on him the entire way, just to make sure he wasn’t going to fall. In true mercenary fashion, though, Cable only indicated the his beaten body was merely an inconvenience and not something that had happened because he might have come close to death that day.

“The door on the right,” She called out when Cable’s shuffling paused for a moment after he was just out of her sight. There was a grunt that might have possibly been a ‘thanks’, but only Cable would ever know if that was what he said or not.

“Well blow my brains out! Cable was actually _talking_ to you. Here I was sure that he was going to break one of your bones or something, but you two are getting along like butter on toast! I am super jelly right now, by the way.” Wade had popped his head out of the kitchen, mask now gone and stuffing his mouth full of what looked like a frozen pork bun or something. Pup didn’t realize that there was still some food actually left in the freezer seeing as Empress, the superheroine who owned the apartment that was one dead body away from a crime scene, was often gone from Earth for months at a time. She didn’t usually leave food, frozen or otherwise, behind unless she'd left the planet in a hurry.

“Cable almost _did_ break something at first, but things worked out and he begrudgingly let me finish patching him up. Now get back in here and close the front door like a civilized person,” Pup instructed and pointed to the front door, which was still hanging open.

“I didn’t hear a ‘please’ in that sentence, young lady,” Wade tutted. He still came out of the kitchen and back into the living room as instructed, but stopped next to the sofa. Pup sent a glare his way and now even Wade could see that she looked like she needed a straight week of sleep. She looked a little tired when he barged into her room to get her to help Cable, but...

“ _Wade,_ ” The girl growled.

Yup, Pup was still as feisty as usual, so he didn’t have to worry. Hopefully. Wade was going to poke her just to double check. “Aw, I can’t stay mad at a cute little glare like that~”

“Poke my cheeks and you’re a dead man,” She warned as she leaned as far away from him as was possible without actually getting out of her chair.

“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” Wade teased, pleased with her reaction, and went skipping over to the door. He closed it like he was told to before hurrying over to the sofa to flop on it and check the hallway to make sure Cable wasn’t out of the bathroom yet. He turned his attention back to Pup when no cyborg came into sight. “So...”

“So...?” Pup mirrored how Wade drew out the word. It was just asking to be covered in the word vomit the man before her was notorious for spewing, but she didn’t care. Pup was used to it and sometimes some funny things would come out. This might not be one of those times.

“What do you think?” Yeah, I wasn’t one of those golden-nugget-in-the-shit kind of times. It brought up the perfect moment for Pup, though. All _too_ perfect. Wade owed her something very, _very_ dear.

“I think you need to give me back my damn _Cheetos_ before I decide to boil you alive, balls first,” Pup deadpanned while leaning back.

Wade shook his head and scooted forward on the bloodied sofa cushion, as if he were trying to tell her some secret. “No no, no; what do you think about _Cable_? Great bod, huh? I mean, he has the Winter Soldier arm and is super grumpy with his whole ‘grrr the future is all dark and scary!’ spiel, and he’s practically the walking epitome of daddy kink, but he looks like he’d be great at cuddling once you pull that stick out of his ass, so I think you two would really make a great--”

“-- _ _C__ _ _heetos__ , Wade,” Pup interjected. Wade sometimes tried to half-assedly play cupid a few times for her, but he already knew that she was just about bound and determined to die alone with a lot of animals of some sort. Or plants. Or both. Most likely both.

Wade never truly pushed for her to find a fuck buddy or something like that anyway because he knew full well that Pup would never go for it. Getting her to go on dates wasn’t his true goal. He wanted to see her happy for longer than five minutes at a time and was going to do his damnedest to get her to be friends with _his_ weird friends so they could all cause complete and total chaos in an old folks home. Maybe some time down the line, maybe in a week. Who knew?

What Wade _did_ know was that this meant that Cable had to get more friends as well, and _that_ was going to be a bitch.

“No drifting off on me, Wade. Give me back my Cheetos,” Pup repeated when she noticed that he was starting to zone out. He might have been having a debate with the voices in his head again, but he usually did that out loud.

Those big, dumb eyes blinked up at her and what came out of Wade’s mouth could have very nearly gotten him killed. “...What the hell makes you think that I have any Cheetos?”

“Because you took them from me, you ass!” Pup’s shout was, to Wade, unexpected. The light smack to his arm? That he _fully_ expected. “I would have helped Cable _without_ you holding something over my head! What kind of sick bastard resorts to holding a bag of _Cheetos_ hostage, anyway!?” She demanded, only seeming to confuse Wade further.

“Hey, I only had one bag of Cheetos today and I ate those on the way back here. They were kinda spicy, but not a bad spicy. Like a Britney Spears kind of spicy. No, wait, that’s not a good analogy, hold on...” He began the usual mixed nonsense, but Pup wasn’t having it.

“They were spicy because they were Chipotle Ranch __CHEETOS__ _®_ , and they were _mine_ you insufferable assclown!” She was getting huffy, riled up, but had a reason other than feeling like she was going to pass out some time soon. Pup _loved_ Cheetos.

Wade knew this of course, but honestly couldn’t remember if the Cheetos he ate were hers or not. She had a point, though. “That _would_ explain the spiciness.”

“Do you know how hard it is to sneak that stuff past Colossus!? I’m lucky to even be able to eat _pasta_ with him around! He sniffs junk food out like a damn bloodhound and this is the first time he’s been sent on a mission in _months!_ I worked hard for those, and now you tell me you’ve gone and _eaten_ them!? After stealing them, no less!” Pup threw her hands in the air in indignation. She wanted to punch Wade, she really _really_ did, but violence wasn’t the answer.

“Wow, I sound like a real asshole right now, don’t I?” Wade cocked his head to the side with a frown. He clearly wasn’t bothered with the fact he mugged her of the thing she’d been craving for a month and a half now.

And that suddenly made violence _definitely_ an answer.

“That is _it_! Say goodbye to your balls, fucker!”

“That’s another thing I’ve been meaning to talk to you about besides your anger issues. _What_ is your fascination with boiling my--OH SHIT STICKS!” Wade all but shrieked as he was forced to dodge a fist and go leaping over the back of the sofa.

Cable had finished stepping into his boots and carefully pulling his shirt on, now buckling his belt as he heard the first sound of what was most certainly a punch against someone’s stomach. There was a thud, then audible scrambling as he continued to put everything where it belonged on his person while idly listening to the scuffle going on in the living room.

“Did you just _bite_ me!? I know some people who are into that, but--ow ow OWOWOWOWOW! I _really_ hope you’ve had your rabies shot!”

Another thud followed by angered hissing and a yelp from Wade as Cable slipped one of his hand guns into its rightful holster. It was quite amusing to hear Wade getting his ass kicked over a bag of Cheetos.

“Claws! _CLAWS!_ What's our safe word again!?”

Chair knocked over, either a pillow or sofa cushion being launched across the apartment to smack against one of the walls.

“I dunno, let’s see what you can come up with while you’re running for your life!”

“Oh come _on_ , it was just a bag of Cheetos!”

Bloody gauze scattered into the hall and Cable assumed one of the two ran or slipped through the pile. No gun shots or blades slicing through the air yet.

“You’ve killed people for _less!_ ”

The two bolted past the open bathroom door and into the bedroom at the end of the hall, only for Wade to go running back towards the living room. Pup was hot on his tail, though her mutant powers weren’t activated. Cable saw her leap at the last second.

“Well I can’t argue that. Oh, oh; is the safe word Cheetos? HOLY MOTHER OF--”

Cable walked out of the bathroom after the lovely sound of a body landing hard on the floor. He was greeted to the sight of Wade lying on his stomach while Pup hooked him into a headlock and started to pull him backwards like she was about to make a pretzel out of him. Wade was choking and trying to hit the floor for a count down as if it were a wrestling match. He looked like he was enjoying himself.

“You don’t. Fuck. With. My Cheetos!” Pup punctuated her words by firm tugs, producing little pops from Wade’s back, but she released him once she was finished. She gave a light smack to the back of his head. “You owe me another bag of the same flavor. I want it by tomorrow.”

“You would make a terrifying, but super _hot_ , debt collector,” Wade wheezed, face down against the carpet. “Can we do this again later? With a huge strap-on and maybe Colossus?”

Pup whacked him upside the head a second time for good measure as she stood. “ _No._ ”

Cable decided to make himself known at that point, as much fun as this... _incident_ ...was. His work was never done and thus he needed to get out of there and hunt down the old fuck of a company and criminal ring founder, as well as destroy any traces of the drugs that could effectively kill over 70% of the mutant population across the planet in less than a week . He didn’t even want to _think_ about the potential damage each mutant could do with their uncontrolled abilities with that drug running through their system.

“How much do I owe you?” He asked while approaching Pup.

“What?” She looked at Cable as she was patting her hands free of imaginary dust, still standing over Wade.

“For the patch up. How much?” Cable repeated. He went to pull some money out of his ~~_fanny_~~ utility pack, but paused when Pup shook her head and met him half way across the small distance.

“You don’t owe me anything,” She assured him. Pup reached up to gently shift the tear in his shirt open enough to make sure the bandage wasn’t indicating another popped stitch. Pleased to see that the gauze was crimson free, she let the cloth fall back into place. “Just promise not to tear those stitches until they’re ready to be taken out in a week or so, which you can do on your own or come back to see me, and that’ll be more than enough for me.”

Cable let her do this, his gaze absent of any of the caution he had earlier. He didn’t know how to feel, but supposed that didn’t currently matter in this situation. The fact that the girl didn’t want any money didn’t surprise him, however, and he still asked: “You sure?”

“Yup,” Pup smiled up at him. It was a sweet, tender smile that made those blue eyes light up, but that didn’t last long. Particularly because Mr. Mister’s _Broken Wings_ began to play and she shot a glare towards the culprit. Wade, holding his phone up, with a dumb grin on his face.

“What? It’s your guys’ theme song! Not to mention the name of this fanfiction, which isn’t very original, but still sweet enough to give you cavities.” He began spouting his (in their opinion) usual ~~_fourth wall breaking_~~ bullshit. Pup visibly stiffened.

“This isn’t some sort of _fanfiction_ , Wade!” She snapped, actually looking a little offended. If this was fiction, then she really _was_ the product of someone’s diseased imagination. That wasn’t something pleasant to think about when Pup wasn’t in any mental state to have the first existential crisis of the day.

“That _you_ know of.” Wade waved his hand about before resting his chin on his palm. He was now lying on his side and posing as if it were some playboy magazine shoot. “It probably won’t be as bad as that other story the writer is still working on. She has some bizarre tastes.”

“...Numbnuts aside,” Pup began slowly and turned her attention back to Cable, who also didn’t seem too amused with Wade’s current antics. She didn’t blame him. “You can come and see me again if you need anything else stitched or cleaned. I’m not a professional, but I’ve done my fair share of wound management at the X-mansion. And with Wade when he’s being an impatient prick or blowing himself to bits.”

“Uh, rude,” Wade interjected.

Pup rolled her eyes so hard that she felt a little dizzy from it. “Kiss my ass, butt plug.”

“Not that I’m complaining about the thought of kissing that _bootylicious_ backside of yours, Puppers, you stole that butt plug insult from Cable.” Wade accused.

“Well he’s not _wrong!_ ” Pup shot back, getting Wade to huff.

“Jeez, and she wasn’t even _in_ the movie. What a little shit.” He looked off to the side as he spoke, shaking his head. Wade did this often and no one really seemed to know why. It was just one of his quirks.

“Who the hell are you even _talking_ to?” Pup couldn’t help but ask. She was starting to get a headache, as well as a little light in the head again. She could push through it, of course, but would need to rest in the next twenty minutes if she didn’t want to bring on another, potentially worse, episode compared to her earlier zone out.

Wade simply smiled and motioned off to the side before saying proudly, “My adoring fans!”

“...Right. Anyway,” Pup muttered with another roll of her eyes. She was definitely going to need to lie down after this, but wanted to finish taking care of Cable first and peered up at him with a somewhat apologetic look in her eyes. “Wade has my number if you need it, but you can always just swing by the school and ask for the little shit--”

“--With daddy issues and _the_ biggest collection of stuffed animals I have ever seen. She’s got this one alligator stuffy she keeps between her legs when she sleeps. What I wouldn’t give to be that gator some nights, but then I wouldn’t get to see how my little pupper snup can be so _cute_ when she’s asleep. Hey, if you’re lucky, she might even add _you_ to her collection, Cable!” Wade seemed to be having a little too much fun with all of this, his words getting Pup’s cheeks to flush as she gave a little whine of embarrassment. Cable, on the other hand, was done with him for the day.

“Wilson.” He said while moving his utility pack onto his back. Cable reached for something else on his person as Wade perked up.

“Yes, daddy kink?” Wade asked eagerly. There was a bang, causing Pup to release that same little yelp-squeak, and Wade’s body fell to the floor. He had a smoldering hole through his forehead from where Cable had shot him.

Great. Now she was going to have to pick up bits of brain off the carpet. At least Wade was quiet for the moment, though said moment wouldn’t be long. Cable must have been pretty fed up to have gone so far as to shoot him.

It was a good thing that Empress, who enjoyed her peace and quiet, owned the entire apartment complex or there might have been a police problem.

“...I’d apologize for his behavior, but I get the distinct impression that you’re used to it by now,” Pup said as she looked at Wade’s body sprawled on the floor. How the _hell_ did he still look like he was posing for a nudie magazine!?

“Unfortunately. Besides,” Cable holstered his gun, “He asked for it.”

“I don’t think he asked to have his brains blown--” Pup cut herself off as she recalled Wade exclaiming ‘well blow my brains out!’ earlier. Once she did, she proceeded to fall into a bubbly fit of giggles. “Oh my gods, I love your sense of humor...!”

“Glad someone does,” Was Cable’s reply as he moved past Pup. He was careful not to bump into her as he stepped over Wade’s body. He was headed for the front door, but wasn’t stopped from leaving this time. A part of him had expected it, but no warm hands or concerned words came.

“I won’t force you to stay any longer, but take the carton of orange juice with you.” Pup smiled while she watched him go. Cable wasn’t the kind of man to stay in one place for long, and she’d patched him up as best she could, so there was no reason to keep him there. However, it didn’t stop her from feeling a little... _sad_.

Cable complied with her instructions about the orange juice and grabbed the convenience store bag off of the coffee table as he passed it. “‘Preciate it.”

“No problem at all. Take it easy out there, Cable. And try not to let any more concrete car parks or buildings fall on you, okay?” She was still keeping a soft little smile on her lips.

“No promises,” Cable replied gruffly and opened the front door. He would have simply left with that, but decided to pause long enough to throw a few final words behind him. “See you around, kitten.”

“...!” Pup’s eye grew wide and her cheeks flushed a deep hue of pink as her jaw nearly dropped; a sight that Cable didn’t miss. He huffed in his amusement at her reaction and left her standing therewith her freckled cheeks threatening to darken, even after Cable was out of sight. That was... _new_ for her...

Wade suddenly popped up from the floor, effectively startling Pup into letting out another of her strange yelps. “Wow. I bet _that’s_ a kink you never knew you had.”


End file.
